


Pretty lie, ugly truth

by JadedCoral



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Humor, forever alone Fíli, with a sprinkle of angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-01
Updated: 2015-02-01
Packaged: 2018-03-10 01:53:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3272405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JadedCoral/pseuds/JadedCoral
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liars make bad friends. Especially liars who are a little bit involved with a Ring, the Dark Lord and the End of the World.</p>
<p>This Fíli would come to learn the hard way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pretty lie, ugly truth

**Author's Note:**

> I've honestly no idea. Okay, so, I was reading the Lord of the Rings, and really wanted to write Gollum. Upon thinking who I wanted to him to interact with I chose Fíli, because I'm still in mourning over him. I haven't planned much, to be honest. I just wanted to write them. And I also want to write Dis, now that I think about it. And Bilbo. Maybe Gimli. Wow, this might become one mess of a story. But we'll see. :D
> 
> This takes place after botfa. No one has died. Because.

There was a mutter like sound, drifting along the rocks like a noisy breath of wind, cold in content but hot with temper. Having caught it made Fíli look up from the piece of wood he was carving into a mindless shape to scan his surroundings to see if there was anyone besides himself present, but he found himself as alone as he had intended when he had woken up that morning with the thought that today Erebor would not miss him even if he hid for a little while.

Still, he couldn’t shake off the feeling that there was something foul nearby, regardless of how unlikely that would be given that any enemies of theirs had been driven away in the last war held and Erebor now being heavily guarded with an ever growing number of dwarves. He’s sitting on the backside of the mountain, though, where there were a scarce amount of exits and nothing much to guard, so sneaking this close to Erebor was not a difficult task per say, but one wanting to breach the mountain might find more hope in doing so by waltzing in through the front gates while receiving a taste of dwarfish fury at its finest than they would trying to carve their way inside through uncountable tons of rock and stone.

If an enemy of some kind _had_ sneaked their way this near Erebor, it wasn’t a very smart one, no matter from which angle he looked at it, Fíli thought.

Feigning unconcern, he went back to his woodcarving, letting a pleasant tune whistle through his lips. Perhaps the melody would be caught by a pair of malicious ears and scare it away. Or maybe it’d lure in something other than woodcarving for Fíli to entertain himself with.

For some while he heard nothing but his own music and draft at work, due to the weather being rather mild and the sounds of the flourishing cities nearby not near enough to be heard this far away. Maybe it had been nothing but a little sprout of paranoia, then, Fíli thought to himself, relieved and just slightly disappointed. He could have done with a little bit of excitement. Then he was alerted by the sound of a heavy breath which rasped in the throat of the one taking it. Fíli could hear it coming from behind him, a little to his left where the mountain wall climbed up in a sharp angle. It sent shivers down his spine and had his hairs rise to attention. But he kept sitting still, clutching the knife in his hand a little tighter while pretending ignorance.

Then there was a sigh and a great long moan, and the voice behind him whispered, as if to itself, “Naught but a dwarf, precious, naught but a dwarf.”

Unbidden, Fíli found himself chuckling. It might not have been considered the appropriate approach to his situation, but if Fíli had wanted to play appropriate today, he would not have come to sit on this side of the mountain by his lonesome in the first place.

“Did it hear us, precious?” the same voice wondered, dropping an octave and adopting darker undertones when it added, “Or has it been driven mad by how alone it is, we wonders?”

“Aye, you’ve been heard, loud and clear, thank you,” said Fíli, keeping his tone light and eyes on his carving knife. He was about to loosen his hold on it a little, but then there was big loud thump in front of him, and it startled him enough to grip it painfully hard instead.

The creature had jumped down from its hiding place and now stood, or crouched, rather, in front of him. It, or he, perhaps, stared at Fíli with large, pale eyes filled mostly with curiosity. He was sickly thin and had spider-like hands, the fingers of which were slowly edging towards Fíli’s boots.

“Aren’t you an unfortunate sight?” said Fíli, never breaking eye contact with the creature.

“Ugly dwarf calls us unfortunate?” the thing scoffed, nose wrinkling and a nasty look growing on his face. “ _Unfortunate_? Yes, precious. We have travelled far to this _unfortunate_ place, yes. Nothing to eat here, no fishes, just dwarfs. We don’t like to eat dwarfs, no we don’t. It is _unfortunate_.”

“All right, all right. I spoke without thinking and meant no offence,” Fíli amended, raising his hand up in mock surrender. “Please don’t eat me,” he added grinning, for he now saw no real threat from the creature in front of him. He might have looked like a goblin, but definitely did not speak like one.

“No?” the thing wondered, then crawling a little closer along the ground. “We don’t like dwarfs. Their skin is too thick for our poor teeth to bite through and they make too much a fuss before they make a hardly decent meal. But perhaps,” he continued, still coming closer, not at all concerned by the boundaries of personal space when he laid his large, pale hand on Fíli’s knee and rose up a little to bring his _unfortunate_ face closer to the dwarf’s. “Perhaps this one has not yet been spoiled with age, yes? Not grown so hard-bitten and bitter, not yet. Young and soft he might be, precious, yes.”

“So might be your intestines,” Fíli responded, pointing the sharp edge of his knife at the thing’s nose and pressing forward until the creature was forced to back away. “Shall we find out?”

The creature looked displeased more than scared, but drew back all the same, spitting out, “Nasty,” as he went.

“We think alike, you and I,” Fíli said easily, letting his eyes run along the back of the thing when it turned around and finding himself lacking sympathy, for the painfully visible vertebrae made him feel nothing much. Discarding the piece of wood he had been working on (it was never going to _be_ anything anyway, he was just carving it into little shreds, out of existence), Fíli stood up and for once felt tall and well-built enough to tower over someone, though up at him as the creature was forced to look, he still bore an expression like Fíli was below him.

“Now, I’m forced to ask what brought you here, hm?” Letting his knife roll a few circles in his hand before sheathing it under the furs of his coat, he took a step forward. The creature looked at him with increasing wariness, but did nothing else to sign that he was intimidated by Fíli’s authority.

“Not its business,” he muttered.

“I cannot begin to tell you how much my business it is,” Fíli told him, wondering whether or not it would be wise to reveal he was the heir to the crown of the kingdom upon which the creature now stood. It would serve to prove his point, but it might also give the thing a reason to attack him. Instead, he continued his interrogation. “Are you alone? Are you a spy?”

“A _spy_!” The creature wailed while throwing his hands up in the air very melodramatically. “Always they thinks poor us are a spy! First serving the foul to spy on the fair and then serving the fair to spy on the foul. Never does they care to think that the only interests we cares to serve are our own. _Gollum, Gollum_.”

The last bit of his rant came out in a strange kind of cough, which for some reason sounded familiar to Fíli. Unable to remember where he had heard it before, he dismissed the thought for the time being, focusing on trying to make sense of the strange being.

“So you’re not here to spy on us, very well.” And very well it was indeed, for spies were to be treated quite roughly, and Fíli was hardly in the mind set to suddenly use such a burst of violence against this thing that had him intrigued. Despite having been threatened to be eaten, Fíli did not feel like his life, or his kingdom for that matter, was in much danger. Surely after having been assured of these things he could grant himself the privilege to converse with this thing a bit more.

It felt like rebelling against the scripts that dictated the theatrical life of the heir first born. This could be his naughty little secret, even. A fun game of which no one else needed to know about. But first.

“I still need to know what you are doing here.”

“ _Spying_ ,” the creature spat through his thin lips, eyes narrowed.

“You might want to keep in mind that your life depends on the answers you give.” Fíli told him, and was gladdened how his words made the thing’s eyes drift to where he had hidden his knife earlier. “Now, are you alone?”

“As alone as the nasty dwarf? No, never,” said the creature, stabbing Fíli hard without the use of pointy objects. “We will always have the precious, yes! The precious is ours, but it was stolen. _Stolen_! We comes to get it back. _That_ is our business.”

“What is the precious,” Fíli questioned, trying to ignore the jabs thrown at him. Shown weaknesses were easy to exploit, and getting angry about them never lead to anything good, especially concerning diplomatics. This his uncle had many times proven to be true.

“It is ours! _Gollum_ ,” the thing croaked and coughed, pressing his whole body closer to the ground when he spied Fíli’s unimpressed look and how his hand was inching towards the insides of his coat where many sharp things had been hidden. “Baggins knows! Baggins stole it!” he cried out.

“Baggins!” Fíli said surprised.

“Yes, yesss! Nasty hobbit stole our precious! We follows him here to gets it back. Nasty hobbit. We hates him!”

“He stole something of ours as well,” Fíli confessed, making the creature look up at him so quickly that he could swear he heard the bones of his neck crack painfully. His expression had completely changed, no more grouchy and hostile, but bright with the hope that a sympathizer had been found.

“Poor dwarf, nice dwarf!” said the creature, crawling a little closer again, his hand pawing at Fíli’s boot. “It understands, then. Must understand our perils, yes.”

Uncomfortable with being touched like this, even with the thick layers of leather and cloth that separated them from direct contact, Fíli could not help but take a step back.

“A summary,” he began. “Baggins stole your precious, you followed him here and now expect to find him inside the mountain which you find difficult to enter unnoticed, so here you are, starving-“

“Yes, precious. _Starving_!”

“While contemplating your current dilemma. Did I get it right?” Finishing, Fíli looked at the thing expectantly, and received a series of enthusiastic nods in return.

“Clever dwarf. Very clever!” the creature agreed almost brightly.

Fíli gave it a thought, weighing, gauging. In the end, he nodded, having made up his mind and with a grin said, “All right then. If I said I was willing to assist you, what would you have me do?”

“We would have it bring us Baggins, of course!” he said immediately, eyes filled with uncontrollable greed and hope while his thin fingers curled into tight fists. “We would have Baggins, writhing and wriggling. And fish! Oh, but we are starving, precious, yes. Fish we would have also.”

“And in return?” Fíli asked, not knowing what to expect, but finding himself very intrigued to hear the answer.

“Anything it wants, anything at all!” promised the thing almost desperately. “What does it wants?”

What _did_ he want? He wanted a little bit of excitement. He wanted something in his life that had nothing to do with royalty. He wanted- he wanted…

Shrugging, Fíli turned around saying, “I’ll think about it.”

“You stay here, out of sight, until I return with your fish and news concerning Baggins, all right?” he instructed, waiting to get another nod before giving a nod himself and starting to make his way back to the nearest entrance he knew of, which wasn’t very near at all.

When he thought he had put enough distance between the creature and himself, Fíli gave a low whistle as he kept walking, the echoes of which sang along the mountain side and disappeared into the cloudless sky. Soon there was an answering cry, and from the corner of his eye he could see a blackness approaching before he felt her sit on his shoulder.

“Brangwen,” he greeted her with a smile, laughing when she scratched the behind of his ear with her beak. “I hope you’re well equipped for a long flight, for there is someone who has a lot of explaining to do.”

She clopped her beak twice, to which he said, “Excellent.”

**Author's Note:**

> You read this weird thing this far, did you? Do feel free to tell me what you thought of it and if you have some ideas what should happen in the future, don't hesitate to throw in requests. Thanks!


End file.
